Test Pattern Has `Dad'filling In Own Blanks

Commentary JOHN GROGAN

July 9, 1997|JOHN GROGAN

Without meaning to, I completely ruined Bruce MacAllister's day.

The retired career Marine was reading the results of the basic-knowledge quiz I gave to 111 South Florida high school students, marveling at how many did not know such fundamentals as the number of feet in a yard and what country bombed Pearl Harbor.

He assumed that he was reading about other people's kids. Then he gave the quiz to his fiancee's three children, whom he already calls his stepchildren.

He expected them to do well. After all, all three are above-average students in the prestigious Nova schools, the crown jewel of the Broward County School Board.

His wife's 13-year-old daughter got 80 percent right. But the 14-year-old son flunked at 60 percent. He thought Ulysses S. Grant signed the Declaration of Independence and that there were 16 feet in a yard. The 10-year-old got only three of 10 right.

MacAllister, who has no children of his own, was aghast. He began tossing out questions of his own and was amazed at what the children did not know.

`He can't cursive write'

He discovered that the 10-year-old had some even more basic troubles.

``He's entering sixth grade, and he's totally unprepared,'' MacAllister said. ``He can't cursive write and can't do third-grade math. He has no clue what the multiplication table is. He can't name the vowels.''

Now MacAllister is taking drastic steps.

He said he has filed a written complaint with the American Civil Liberties Union, claiming that his child is being denied his right to a public education.

``What they call a public education and what I call one seem to be two different things,'' the former Marine says.

His fiancee, Connie Conti, admits that her son has had some emotional problems stemming from her protracted divorce from the children's father. And she concedes that, as a single mother, she allowed herself to lose touch with her children's education.

``I was working three jobs. I got caught up with making sure they had a roof over their heads,'' Conti said.

Still, she thinks the school is to blame.

``He went to school every day and didn't get what he should have gotten when he was in their care,'' she said.

I called Margarita Sasse, director over all four Nova schools. She said she could not comment on a specific student but had no memory of the mother or her fiance ever coming to her before turning to the ACLU.

Parents play a role, too

Parents, she said, have to share responsibility for educating their children.

``If a child isn't writing sentences, that didn't start this year or this month. And it doesn't get fixed in a year or a month.''

That question rubbed at me, as well. Children learn cursive writing in third grade. How could he have made it this far without his mother noticing a problem?

Conti's answer was she was preoccupied with supporting her children. She trusted the school to educate them.

What we can all agree on is that this child, like so many of those I saw when I gave my quiz, somehow made it through six years of public education, earning B grades, without picking up some very basic learning.

But is he a poster child for an inept and uncaring public education bureaucracy? Or for what happens when the family unit falls apart and leaves children to drift?

Regardless of whether the ACLU takes up MacAllister's cause, he said he plans to buy his own set of student textbooks and immerse himself in the day-to-day education of his soon-to-be stepchildren.

And that is the greatest gift he can give them. The gift of an involved parent.

John Grogan's column appears every Sunday and Wednesday. Write him at 200 E. Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale 33301, or by e-mail: jgrogn(AT)aol.com.